PROLOGUE

“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E! Come along and sing the song and join the jamboree!”

“Thanks for being here tonight with us, Orlando! We are The Cupcakes and this is our first show ever!”

“The contract between Jive Records and The Cupcakes is hereby terminated.”

“Please rise and welcome your graduates!”

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride!”

“It’s a boy!”

“This is to certify that Amanda Clarke and Joshua Bennett are no longer joined in holy matrimony in the eyes of the Law.”

“Hello, this is Mandy from Griffin Logistics and we are conducting a research survey on behalf of – hello? Hello?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When we’re young, we have dreams of what our lives will be, and very seldom do they turn out that way. The dreams of fame and fortune, love and marriage that comfort the minds of children are replaced with panicked nightmares about rent, car payments and dates. Birthday cake candles are blown out year after year, but the dreams never seem to come true. However, for Mandy Clarke, her dreams did come true – for a short while. Then, as fast as they happened, they were gone.

Mandy had the childhood that few have. She didn’t spend her weekends playing softball with her friends or dangerously swinging from the monkey bars. She was learning how to sing, learning to dance and learning to be the Next Big Thing. But it was what she loved. She didn’t want to get dirty on the playground. She wanted to be a Mousketeer. She wanted to sing and dance on television and be famous. She wanted to dress in fancy clothes and go to even fancier parties. She wanted to marry a handsome man and have his beautiful babies. She wanted a big house with a swimming pool and satellite TV. She wanted it all. And momentarily, she had it all.

Mandy took her dreams for granted. She never embraced a dream coming true; she found herself living in the future, wondering what dream would come true next. She believed with all of her heart that the next dream would always top the previous one, believed that her life would continuously move forward, never back. But, as luck and life would have it, she was wrong. Or was she?

CHAPTER ONE

The clock against the wall ticked slowly, rhythmless. The battery was dying but no one had bothered to replace it. It would pause for a few beats before picking up again, making the Friday afternoon trudge along slower than usual. In the back corner of the fifth floor office, the Xerox machine jammed, filling the room with a loud hum. Mandy barely glanced up from her desk as two IT guys raced passed her, the jammed copy machine clearly the highlight of their week. She heard their giggles echo down the cubicle corridor and she wondered if they were laughing about protons or neutrons this time. Or whatever else nerds laughed about.

Sighing loudly, Mandy leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms back, her fingertips touching the wall of the next cubicle. She tapped them lightly against the partition, hoping to stir the girl next to her. Moments later, she heard a tap-tap-tap reply before a cute Pixie face popped up.

“Let’s learn Morse Code!” the young girl suggested enthusiastically, giggling to herself. With Jessica Edwards – known more commonly as Jessie – everything came out of her mouth sounding enthusiastic. She could announce the death of her dog and would still sound bubbly and cheerful. “We could talk about everyone that way and no one would know!”

“Great idea!” agreed Mandy teasingly. “It’ll work until someone invents typing on phones.”

Jessie scoffed and waved her hand, dismissing Mandy’s ludicrous idea. “You’re talking cray, no one’ll ever think of that!” she joked back, giggling again. “Hey, let’s go out tonight! I’ve been listening to Blurred Lines totally on repeat and I need to dance!” To demonstrate her desire, Jessie shook her arms over her head and attempted to beatbox a tune.

“Sure,” Mandy agreed. “But let’s do dinner first. Josh has Gavin this weekend, so there’s no way I’m cooking anything.” And I hate being home alone, she thought to herself, but she didn’t divulge the information to Jessie. Being just twenty three years old, Jessie didn’t understand the life of a divorced mom nearly ten years her senior. And she shouldn’t have to – Mandy remembered wistfully when she herself was twenty three and blissfully stupid. She wanted Jessie to have those same dreams, so when her own desires came crashing down around her, she’d at least have her naïve twenties to reminisce about.

“Deal!” Jessie confirmed happily, bouncing out of her cubicle. “I’ll go rally the troops!” she declared, flouncing off and not caring who saw. Jessie was easily the most inefficient worker in the department, and yet, the only one with a completely clean file. Being young, flirtatious and blonde certainly had its advantages when your boss is old, horny and balding.

“Okay,” Mandy answered, though Jessie was already out of earshot. With a sigh, she turned back to her desk, put her headpiece back on and turned to her computer.

“Hello, this is Mandy from Griffin Logistics and we are conducting a research survey on behalf of Best Buy. I understand that a member of your household recently made a purchase…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“… so then he just stood there, in the hallway, with my ass in both hands!” Monica Freemont continued, butting out her cigarette and taking a long swig of beer before lighting another Marlboro Light. “I think he thought he was LaBron James and was ready to just dribble it down the court!”

Hysteric laughter erupted from the table as the coworkers painted a mental picture of Ivan Jessop – the ultimate definition of nerd and geek combined – grabbing anyone’s bottom, let alone Monica’s. She was the cougar of the group, the Samantha. With her platinum blonde hair, husky smoker’s voice and collection of push-up bras, she could easily eat someone like Ivan alive.

“What did you do?” Jessie asked, eyes wide as she leaned in closer, horrified and yet entranced by Monica’s tale.

Monica shrugged, blowing a puff of smoke over her shoulder. “I made some flirty comment about how tugging on all those computer wires over the years really made his hands strong,” she answered, a wild gleam in her eyes. “Computer wires, right?” she added, suggestively wiggling her eyebrows.

“Oh, gosh!” Erica Kidman exclaimed, covering her face with her hands. A married mother of two, she was easily the tame one of the group. Months prior, she’d attempted to start a swear jar for the group, in fear that their Friday night conversations got too R-rated for her sensitive ears. Monica was the only one who obliged, dumping her entire change purse onto the table as she proceeded to cuss like a sailor. “You didn’t! He probably peed his pants right then and there!”

Monica shook her head. “Not quite,” she answered. “But I think something else was going on in his little flood pants, if you know what I mean!”

“I don’t believe it!” Mandy declared, leaning back in her seat and taking a long sip of her Pinot Grigio. “I don’t even think he knows that asses are grabbable!”

“Believe it, kid,” Monica advised her. “It happened. The day has come, girls,” she went on, holding her drink up to toast. The other girls looked at her curiously but followed suit with their own drinks. “Today, Ivan Jessop has finally discovered the opposite sex!”

“Here, here!” Jessie cheered with a giggle, clinking her vodka tonic against the other glasses. “I just hope he doesn’t find my ass as desirable as Monica’s!”

“He won’t,” teased Mandy, nudging Jessie playfully. The topic of her assets – or lack of – seemed to come up on a regular basis, but being the good sport she was, Jessie didn’t mind much. Besides, she knew that as soon as she had enough money, she would have fantastic assets like Monica’s store bought perks.

“I think maybe I should try that trick that the slut in Now and Then tried,” mused Jessie, woefully looking down at her breasts. “What was it she used again? Jell-O?”

“Pudding,” Erica and Mandy, the 90’s kids of the group, answered in unison. “Jell-O was too jiggly,” Mandy added matter-of-factly. “Pudding gave a more realistic texture. Vanilla, to be exact.”

Erica nodded in agreement. “Exactly,” she answered with a grin. If there was one thing the two girls had in common, it was their love for everything bad that came out of the 90’s. Music, movies, bad hair and horrible catchphrases were their passion. If there was one meaningless piece of trivia from the grunge slash pop era that one didn’t know, the other was sure to know it. It was Erica’s love of the 90’s that first brought her and Mandy together. While Mandy had been in a singing group when she was nineteen and had been a Mousekateer as a child, no one recognised her. Most of the diehard boy –and-girl-group lovers didn’t even know her group – The Cupcakes – had existed. But they had. For two short years in the late 90’s, Mandy and four other girls donned the platform shoes and short skirts and danced around on makeshift stages at local malls. They put out exactly one CD and made exactly two videos – one of which was never even released. The highlight of The Cupcake’s True Hollywood Story was the summer of 2000, which they spent touring with the Backstreet Boys. They were the opening act… for the opening act. They sang exactly four songs while the ticketholders were waiting in line for Backstreet Boys merchandise and hotdogs. But they loved every minute of it. When their contract with Jive Records was terminated due to extremely low record sales, the Cupcake girls tried to find new representation and attempted to break out of the pop music cookie cutter. It didn’t work. The bubble gum pop era was on its way out the door and without making a name for themselves when the rest of the Big Names did, the girls had no chance. Parting ways, they all still held onto the hopes that one day, fame would find them.

Fame found a couple of the girls, but not Mandy. Finding Mandy, however, was Erica. Mandy had just moved to Texas to be with her now-ex-husband and was in the middle of Wal-Mart, trying to figure out why Texans put everything in the store in such silly places. Wandering through the pet food aisle as a last attempt to find Febreeze, her cart crashed into Erica’s. Mandy apologised but the girl stared at her, creeping Mandy out until she finally blurted out, “Red Velvet!”

Dumbfounded, shocked and more than a little pleased that this girl recognised her from her Cupcake days was the beginning of their bond. At first, understandably, Mandy wondered if Erica liked her because of her past or because of herself. She quickly proved to Erica that she was lame, boring and living the life of a housewife in Texas, not an onstage superstar and the two became fast and close friends.

“You guys are seriously uncool,” Jessie informed them with a roll of her eyes. “Who remembers stuff like what flavour the pudding was?”

“Hey!” Mandy retorted. “Who wants to do stuff like put the pudding in her shirt, huh? Talk about uncool…” she added, a teasing twinkle in her eye as she ordered another round for the table from the approaching waitress.

“You’re just trying to talk me out of it ‘cause you know I’d get all the guys…” Jessie answered innocently, downing the last of her drink and slamming the empty glass onto the table with flourish. “Okay! One more drink and then we’re dancing, chicks!”

“Bust it,” Mandy stated, humming the first few bars of the song before Jessie covered her face with her hands.

“Enough with the 90’s!” she pleaded. “Trust me, they weren’t cool! I’m over it!”

CHAPTER TWO

“We can leave if you want,” offered Howie Dorough kindly, looking around the bar, which was filling up fairly quickly, and back to his friend.

“Yeah, whenever you’re ready, man,” added Kevin Richardson, nodding supportively.

“I’m not done eating,” AJ McLean answered, an edge to his voice. He appreciated his friend’s concern, but all he wanted to do was eat the burger he’d waited forty-five minutes for, drink his watered down iced tea and enjoy a nice, normal night with his friends. His concerned friends. His overly concerned friends. His friends who would be sporting matching black eyes if they didn’t let him finish.

“Okay, but when you are?” Kevin pressed. He didn’t feel comfortable having AJ in this type of environment. He knew his friend was an adult and could make his own decisions, but he also knew that his decisions just didn’t affect him anymore. AJ had a wife and a baby back home – an extremely caring, forgiving and yet terrified wife. The life on the road was different in every way possible than the life at home and Kevin didn’t want to see AJ pick up old habits from visual temptations, boredom or loneliness.

“Then I’ll be done,” answered AJ slowly, as though he was talking to a toddler. “Look, guys, I just want to eat some food, okay?”

“Okay,” Howie and Kevin answered in unison, Howie holding his hands up in a surrender pose. “We just –“ Howie began, but stopped as Kevin, who picked up on AJ’s tone, kicked him under the table. Constantly bringing up AJ’s substance abuse wasn’t going to do anything but piss AJ off.

“Never mind,” Howie finished, standing up. “Bathroom’s over there, right Kev?” he asked, pointing across the bar. Kevin nodded as Howie stepped away from the table and strode across the bar. He was deep in thought – thinking about his wife Leigh and their two boys back home. It was the first time he’d been away from his family on a tour and truthfully, he wasn’t sure how he liked it. He loved touring and performing. He was still amazed that their fans still came out and supported the group two decades since their inception. But with a beautiful girl and two little boys waiting for him in Florida, it was hard to enjoy touring as much as he used to.

Deep in thought, Howie almost didn’t see the giggling duo of girls heading out of the bathroom. One of them held the others bottom in her hands and was reciting moves from a basketball game, as though she was a sports announcer.

“Ivan fakes to the left, fakes to the right, down the court, three pointer! He wins all the things!” she cheered, spinning around and nearly crashing into Howie. Blushing, and ignoring Monica’s laughter, Mandy grinned sheepishly.

“Haha… sorry!” Mandy apologised, laughing as she covered her face with her hand, shielding her eyes from this stranger.

“No worries,” Howie replied, watching the girl curiously as she and her friend laughed over her near miss, walking down the hall arm-in-arm. He knew she looked familiar – but in the span of his career, Howie had met a lot of people. It didn’t seem to take much for people to look familiar to him these days. But then, it could be age.

Still, he knew he knew her.

“I think I know you,” he decided to call down the hall. Both girls turned around and looked at him, the older of the two smirking flirtatiously at him.

“Hmm… I think I would remember someone as handsome as you,” Monica purred, taking a few steps closer. “But you’re more than welcome to get to know me,” she added suggestively.

“Oh… my God!” Mandy suddenly exclaimed. She’d turned around when Monica had begun brazenly flirting with the guy, but it took her a few seconds to realise that she, too, knew him. “Howie?!”

“Mandy Clarke,” he determined with a smile, relieved that he remembered her name after all these years, though more relieved that she was who she thought. He didn’t want to try and fight off her feisty friend. Something told him she didn’t take kindly to the word ‘no’. “It’s been a long time.”

“So long!” agreed Mandy enthusiastically. She took a step forward, wondering if it’d been too long to give him a hug. Taking only half a second to decide – screaming fan girls hugged him every day – Mandy reached up and wrapped her arms around her old friend. “I can’t believe you’re here! In Texas! What!”

Monica stood between the two, her mouth slightly open in shock. It wasn’t that Mandy wasn’t pretty and couldn’t land an attractive guy but, well… she didn’t! In all the years Monica had known Mandy, she’d known her to be with one man and one man only: her ex-husband. And he was boring.

“You know him?” Monica asked in disbelief. “Good job, Mandy,” she praised under her breath.

Rolling her eyes at Monica, Mandy gestured her arm to Monica. “Howie, this is my friend Monica. Mon, this is Howie! We toured together, like…” she looked up at Howie, trying to figure out the math. “Like twelve, thirteen years ago!”

“Oh!” Monica exclaimed. “Oh, you’re in that little boy band!” she said, her voice changing to a sweet tone, as though she was praising a kindergarten student for being such a big, strong grown up.

Howie laughed, not insulted but amused. “Yeah, I’m Little Boy Howie,” he joked back, seeing Monica’s eyes drawn to his zipper.

“I doubt that,” she purred, her eyes staying fixated on his zipper regions before she finally drew her gaze upwards and gave him a wink.

“He’s married!” Mandy stressed to her friend, remembering reading about Howie’s wedding and subsequent babies in the tabloids she almost always bought while waiting in line at the grocery store. Something about reading about Lindsay Lohan in jail or Khloe Kardashian getting a divorce made Mandy feel so much better about her own life.

“Well, crap!” Monica huffed, dropping the flirtatious act. “They always are!” she added, turning on her heel and stalking back to the patio.

Snickering, Mandy turned back to Howie. “Sorry,” she apologised. “That’s how we say ‘nice to meet you’ in Monica’s own language,” she told him.

“No worries,” Howie assured her. “You got time to come say hi, or do you have to get back to your hen party?” he teased.

“Say hi,” Mandy repeated. “Who else is here?”

“Kevin and AJ.”

AJ. Just hearing his name sent shivers up her arms. Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought of seeing him after so many years. She’d thought about it, no doubt, over the course of the last decade. Something about that first love, it never goes away.

“I’d love to see them,” she answered earnestly after a brief pause. That feeling of being scared yet excited rushed over her. “But… I do have to get my friend Erica. I apologise in advance, she still lives in 1998, I think,” Mandy told him with a small laugh. “But… she’ll kill me if I don’t introduce her to you guys. And, don’t worry, she’s married,” she added with a smile.

“Awesome,” answered Howie. “We’re just sitting over there,” he told her, pointing across the bar. “Go get your friend and come catch up!”

“I will,” Mandy promised as they parted ways. Beelining out the door, she rushed back to her table and excitedly fell into her seat.

“What took you so long?” asked Monica. “He’s married!”

“Who’s married?” Erica questioned.

“You didn’t say anything?” Mandy asked Monica, surprised.

“He’s married,” Monica stressed. “What do I give a crap if he made little girl’s panties wet for the last hundred years?”

Erica curiously raised an eyebrow and stared at Mandy. “Who’s married?” she repeated, feeling like the answer wouldn’t be someone she went to high school with.

“Okay,” Mandy began slowly. “Now, remember, Erica. You’re thirty-three years old. You have two kids. You’re on the PTA. You have a reputation of a mature, together grown woman. What I am about to tell you is going to make you want to scream like a thirteen year old. Just remember… you’re not,” she stressed, knowing she was making Erica go crazy inside.

“Who’s married!?” she squeaked out, gripping the edge of the table in anticipation.

“Howie.”

That was all Erica needed was one word, a single name, to screech loudly and clap her hands together excitedly. “He’s inside?!” she yelped, balling her hands up into fists, shaking them around as though she held invisible maracas in each hand. “What do we do?!”

“We’re going to go inside,” Mandy explained slowly. “We’re going to sit down and visit with old friends of mine. We’re not going to ask for autographs,” she added, shaking her head. Erica mimicked the head shaking.

“We’re not going to ask for pictures.”

Erica continued to shake her head along with Mandy, though she was hardly listening.

“We’re not going to scream. Or faint. Or throw up.”

“No!” Erica exclaimed. “None of that! I promise! Please, please, let’s go!”

“Okay,” Mandy agreed, satisfied that Erica wouldn’t make too much of a fool out of herself. Standing up, she turned her attention to Monica and Jessie. “You guys coming?”

Monica scoffed. “Married,” she reiterated. “Besides, there’s a father son duo over there. I think Jessie and I are going to go make all their dreams come true,” she added, winking at Jessie.

“Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “Besides, like… no offense? But I don’t really want to hang out with some old married guy,” she told Mandy, making a face at the thought, the fact that the ‘old married guy’ was pretty much a real celebrity. But unless he was Bruno Mars or one of the Real Housewives, Jessie didn’t care.

“Okay, let’s go then!” Erica pleaded, tugging on Mandy’s arm like an over-eager toddler. “Howie! Eeii!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“You know what they say if you shake it more than twice,” commented AJ, not looking up from his plate as Howie rejoined the table. “Or did you get it stuck in the zipper again?”

Howie sat down, ignoring AJ’s comments. He wondered what kind of comments he’d come up with when Howie told his friends who he randomly just ran into.

“So,” he began, “I just got hit on.”

“Hang on, let me call TMZ,” AJ commented, pretending to search his pockets for his phone. “This is headline news!”

“By a girl,” Howie continued.

“This is headline news!” Kevin joked, getting in on the Howie ribbing.

Howie snickered. “So, anyway…” he continued. “This girl has a friend. Guess who she is?”

“Oh, I couldn’t even fathom a guess,” AJ replied sarcastically, slurping down the last of his iced tea.

Pausing briefly for effect, Howie smiled and stated, “Mandy Clarke.”

Sputtering on his iced tea, AJ coughed and looked at Howie in shock. “Mandy Clarke?” he repeated incredulously. “Like… Red Velvet Cupcake Mandy Clarke?”

“The one and only,” answered Howie triumphantly.

“Holy shit,” AJ breathed out, leaning back in his seat. Mandy Clarke wasn’t the first anything on AJ’s roster. He slept with girls before her. He loved girls before her. He thought about his future with girls before her. But there was something about her – fresh faced, frizzy haired, scrawny little teenager – that made him fall head over heels for her, felt things for her he never felt for another girl before. Or, if he was being completely honest with himself, after.

“Yeah,” Howie answered in agreement. “I haven’t seen her in something like… twelve years.”

“Something like that,” agreed AJ, still in a daze. “So, what? So she lives here? In Texas?”

Howie shrugged. “I guess so,” he replied. “You can ask her yourself, though,” he added, gesturing to his left. AJ looked over and there she was, looking exactly the same and yet completely different all at the same time. For a moment, he forgot about his wife and his child and all the time that had passed. For a brief moment, it was the year 2000, him and her, insane and in love.

A million thoughts of what to say buzzed through his mind in a few short seconds. ‘You look great’, ‘How’s things?’ ‘It’s been forever’, ‘It’s good to see you’, but nothing sounded right. This wasn’t just an old friend. This was Mandy. So, simply, he stood up and smiled.

“Hi, Mandy.”

CHAPTER THREE

He looked different. Older, healthier. But he was still AJ. The man who stole her heart and still held onto part of it. It wasn’t like she was still in love with him after so many years. But, as her first love, he still had a part of her heart that no one else ever could take.

“Hi,” replied Mandy, a soft smile crossing her lips. “You look –“ Amazing? Sober? Happy? “ – Great,” she settled on, taking an awkward step forward, unsure if they would meet in the middle for a welcomed hug hello or if a simple yet impersonal handshake would suffice.

“So do you,” AJ told her honestly, stepping around Kevin’s chair and enveloping the girl from his past into an embrace. “It’s so good to see you,” he told her, his voice muffled by her hair. It smelled delicious. But what girl didn’t have great smelling hair? It was one of the many – many, many – things that drove men wild about them. “It’s been too long.”

Mandy would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought of this moment; what she’d say, how it would be, what song would be playing, what smile would be on his face, and hers. But here in the moment, hugging the man she once thought as her forever – who now had his own forever – she was virtually speechless.

She smiled, breaking off the hug that was bordering on too long. “Yes, it has,” she agreed. Placing her hands on Kevin’s shoulders, she smiled down at the man. “Hi, Kevin,” she said, hugging him as he twisted in his seat to greet Mandy.

“Hey, kid,” Kevin answered with a grin. “Is this your friend?”

Mandy looked over at Erica, who was practically vibrating with excitement. “Uhm, no,” Mandy teased, laughing at her near-hysteric friend. “Yeah, guys, this is my friend Erica. Erica, this… wait. You probably know more about them that I do!”

Howie let out one quiet snicker – Mandy definitely knew one of them a lot better than Erica ever would – before composing himself and holding out his hand to the overly excited mother of two. “Nice to meet you, Erica,” he greeted.

“Hi!” Erica replied, her voice several octaves higher than normal. The others introduced themselves before shifting positions and inviting the two girls to join them at their table.

“So, what in the world are you guys doing at here?” Mandy asked once they were seated, making a face. She loved the bar, but not so much the town she was stuck living in. “You realise this town is a suckfest, right?”

“They had a show tonight in Cedar Park,” Erica answered before any of the guys could. “But some of the pipes at the arena burst, so the show’s been canceled.” Seeing everyone looking at her, Erica blushed a deep shade of crimson. “Sorry,” she mumbled out, kicking herself for being so awkward.

“That’s right, though,” answered Kevin kindly, not wanting to make Erica feel silly. “So we’re going to try it tomorrow night, but if it’s not fixed, we’ll just come back before we go over to Asia in October.”

“Plus, we heard this place had the best burgers and prettiest girls,” AJ added flirtatiously. He was married – happily. But once a flirt, always a flirt. He knew he wouldn’t act on any of his flirty comments. It was pure innocent.

“Can’t argue with that,” Mandy teased back, ignoring the fluttery stomach AJ’s innocent comment gave her. Purely innocent.

“So I guess we oughta ask what you’re doing in Texas,” Kevin stated, interrupting the little flirt session that could go on and on with AJ and Mandy. He knew his friend loved his wife very much and wouldn’t ever jeopardize his relationship, but he also knew that Mandy still held a special place in his heart and Kevin wasn’t sure how far things could get with the two former lovebirds.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” answered Mandy with a laugh. “No, I moved here like… seven or eight years ago. Uhm… got married, and he’s from Cedar Park, so…” she held her hands out in a voila pose and shrugged.

“You’re married?” AJ repeated, the words sounding weird to him as he heard his own voice. The thought of Mandy being married was odd to him, almost unsettling. He didn’t expect her to still be pining after him for the rest of her life, of course – he wasn’t – but he found himself almost embarrassingly jealous of her husband.

“Uhm, well… divorced now,” Mandy admitted, casting her gaze downwards and twirling the bracelet on her wrist. Telling the happily married AJ that she was now unhappily divorced was more than a little awkward. “I have a little boy,” she said quickly, turning the topic away from yet another failed relationship of hers. “Gavin… he just turned four. He’s kind of a big deal,” she added, smiling the proud mommy smile as she pulled out her phone to show off her son.

AJ smiled and reached out for Mandy’s phone, peering over his glasses at the picture of the white-blonde little boy holding a fishing pole twice as tall as he. “That is one good looking kid,” he commented, holding the phone over to Kevin and Howie could see. “He looks just like you.”

“Lucky for him!” cracked Erica, her dislike for her friend’s ex now apparent to the three men.

“Thanks,” Mandy replied, taking her phone back from AJ. “Let me see your kids!” she instructed, laughing as the three fathers scrambled to pull out their own phones. “Isn’t it weird? Being parents? Last time we all sat around… “ she paused, remembering the last time she’d been with AJ. It wasn’t a happy memory. It was still by far the worst moment of her life, worse than her husband telling her he wanted a divorce. Way worse, because she wanted the divorce, too. She hadn’t wanted to lose AJ.

“We were all just kids ourselves,” she finished, casting a glance at AJ and wondering if he was thinking about their last time together, too.

AJ looked down, fumbling with his phone and feeling Mandy’s eyes on him. He knew she was thinking about the last time they saw each other, and the memory made him sick. He knew he wrecked her, shattered her and there wasn’t anything he could do to ever right it. Now being a father to a little girl himself, he wondered how he could have let himself hurt Mandy so badly. If anyone ever did to his little Ava what he did to Mandy, AJ would be behind bars.

“This is Ava,” AJ said after what felt like a lengthy pause, handing Mandy his phone. He watched her as she looked at the picture; a small smile forming on her face but he couldn’t read it like he could years before.

“She’s absolutely beautiful,” Mandy told AJ, smiling softly at the picture of AJ’s tattooed covered arms enveloping the pure, innocent little girl. She knew, despite his struggles and addictions, that he was made to be a father. The smiling faces looking at her from the photo proved that to her.

“Who’d have thought, huh?” AJ joked, taking the phone back from Mandy and handing her Howie’s. The old friends spent a few moments looking at each other’s kids, laughing and exchanging stories about the trials and tribulations of being parents before the loud ring from Mandy’s phone interrupted their conversation.

“Sorry,” Mandy apologised, sighing as she saw the name ‘Josh’ across the screen. “Hello?”

“Where are you?”

Even though they were divorced, he was still demanding and controlling. As much as Mandy adored her son, she wished her break up from Josh could have been a clean break. “Out with Erica and the girls,” she answered shortly. “Why?”

“Cause I need you to take Gavin.”

“Right now?” Mandy asked incredulously, grabbing Erica’s phone from beside her and looking at the time. “He should be asleep!”

“He is,” answered Josh, his voice as short as Mandy’s. “But I gotta go. Can I drop him at your house in like twenty minutes?”

Mandy scoffed, but Josh didn’t say anything. “Are you serious?” she asked, irritated at the fact that her ex would wake up their son and drive him all the way across town just so he could go off and be a single guy for a few hours.

“Yeah, so I’ll meet you there?”

“I fucking suppose!” Mandy snapped, hearing the click as the line went dead. She sighed and ran her hand through her hair. The last thing she wanted to do was leave. She felt if she left, it would be another ten or more years before she saw AJ again. She didn’t want that.

“What’s going on?” Erica asked, a scowl forming on her face. She couldn’t stand Josh, and if he was going to get in the way of her hanging out with three fifths of the Backstreet Boys for the rest of the evening, he’d better start sleeping with one eye open.

Mandy shrugged, annoyed at Josh and humiliated that the phone call was airing all the dirty laundry from their tumultuous relationship in front of an ex who was so much happier than she was. “I guess he’s got stuff to do so he’s dropping Gavin off in, like, twenty minutes at my house.”

“What!?” Erica and AJ both yelped in unison. “But I don’t want to go home!” Erica whined. “My kids are there! And my dumb husband!” And the Backstreet Boys are here! she thought to herself, sulking like a teenager.

And I don’t want you to go, AJ thought, surprising himself.

“I mean… you guys could all come to my house?” asked Mandy, a hopeful tone to her voice. As quickly as she spoke the words, she dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “Never mind, I know you’re crazy busy and everything like that…”

“No, we’re not,” AJ assured her, his comment drawing looks from Howie and Kevin. He ignored them, pressing on. “We could definitely come and hang out… it’s been too long to let you disappear after fifteen minutes,” he added, this comment directed more at Howie and Kevin.

Erica’s eyes widened with excitement. “That would be so fun!” she squealed happily, not knowing enough of Mandy’s past with AJ to try and talk her out of a bad idea. Which it was. A very bad idea.